


and now i must taste your death in my mouth

by theholychesse



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Grief, Mourning, Moving On, implied doctor/yaz but only if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 06:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16805494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theholychesse/pseuds/theholychesse
Summary: even lonely gods must pass, eventually





	and now i must taste your death in my mouth

**Author's Note:**

> or: the death of the doctor

Yaz thought everything was alright, at first. It seemed alright. They had run from the Alien of the Week—The name escapes her, even now, even knowing that it was they who—  
  
They ran. They ran, and terror throbbed in their heart, but adrenaline made them giddy, made them arrogant. They always got away fine in the end, after all. No matter what, at the end of the day they all gathered in the kitchen with a cuppa, chatting about the previous adventure fervently.   
  
Everything was alright. Everything was alright.   
  
The Doctor was shot with some kind of purple energy beam—And she had _wheezed,_ smashing into the wall, clutching her side—  
  
" _Doctor—_ " They had cried, gathering her up in their arms, but she had waved them off after a moment.   
  
"—I'm alright, must have been calibrated for a human—Just stung a little, now I'm fine—We need to keep on running!" She cried. She stumbled for the first few steps, but when she leaped and ran as she always did, the terror, the anxiety, it abetted. 

When they saw the brilliant blue of the TARDIS—It was like the stitch in Graham's side faded away. The worry creeping at Ryan's heart was swept away. And relief flooded Yaz, so greatly, so brilliantly, that she felt luminescent with it.   
  
The door of the TARDIS slammed behind them—The TARDIS rocking and sputtering when energy beams hit it, the Doctor rushing up to the console, madly flipping switches to get them _away—  
  
_And when the pneumatic, low, soothing _w_ _hoosh whoosh whoosh_ sounded, Yaz wheezed with relief, Graham flopped down onto the ground, and Ryan just muttered low thanks to the merciful universe.   
  
The Doctor still stood at the console, stiff and straight, hands spread on the shiny chrome and orange-lit metal. 

"Can we _not_ ever do that again?" Graham begged, from the rough vicinity of the floor. 

"Yea'. Like, uh, ever? Can we go somewhere, like, quiet next? I'm feeling a spa, if I must be honest." Ryan was really doing a commendable effort, of this whole talking business, even as his voice sounded raw and hoarse.   
  
"Yeah." The Doctor breathed, slowly turning back, to glance at them. "But how about we all take a, a, a little bit of a break? Home sweet home, after all, is the best, uh, place, to rest up nice and proper." She says. Her grin isn't as brilliant as it usually is. It's dull and soft at the edges, brittle, even.  
  
Yaz doesn't notice the significance of that. Not yet.   
  
"Oh you have to be kidding me. How long?" Ryan asks.   
  
"Dunno." The Doctor turns back. "Hopefully not long."   
  
She fiddles with more knobs. The gentle rocking of the TARDIS through the vortex becomes a little rough, the whooshing returning again, soon—Until Yaz feels the landing in her bones.   
  
Ryan peers out of the TARDIS—"That's Sheffield alright. And hey! We're not that far from Yaz's place!"   
  
"Oh God." Yaz says, staring at her hands. Ryan turns to her, brows furrowed. "I forgot the bread."   
  
Graham looks a little pale. Ryan is giving a solemn nod. "I know just the place."  
  
"I love bread." Says the Doctor. "Let's go! To the bread!" There's a bounce to her step, a brightness to her features, and she's just a few steps from the entrance of the TARDIS—  
  
When her knees buckle under her, and she collapses to the floor.   
  
"Oh, whoops." She says, tonelessly, from the floor, in the split moment in which Yaz, Graham, and Ryan are too shocked to move. And then, all at once, they're falling down, grasping at her, pawing over her—Yaz's heartbeat is throbbing in her veins, as she holds the Doctor's head. Ryan tries to pull her up by her arm, but the Doctor just hisses, " _Owowowowowow_." And that stops that.   
  
"Doc! What's happening?" Graham doesn't know much about medical things—But living, or, rather, having lived with a nurse, he's picked up on some things—Checking her pulse, accommodating for her duel hearts—Peering over her, and noting the blue at her lips.   
  
Yaz feels the Doctor's gasps, thin and shaking, against her thighs. She made a soft little sound at being placed on her lap—But it's quickly replaced by a grunt of pain.   
  
"I, uh, may, uh, have been a wee bit mistaken." Her hand was at her side—And when it peels back, and Yaz sees something sticky underneath the fabric of her blue shirt.   
  
They're all so close now, so used to each other, that it's no big thing at all when Ryan hikes up her shirt—  
  
And a wound, raw and scorched and black, oozing a liquid that's—That's—A _brilliant_ gold, so bright, like looking directly into the heart of a star, but almost as if it's trapped in fluid. "Oh." The Doctor says, voice thin. "I see. They trapped my regeneration energy."   
  
"What—What—What—" Yaz stutters, breath picking up with panic.   
  
"Regeneration energy is—How I heal. What I am, in a lot of ways." Her hand slides down, pressing into the liquid, holding up her digits to the light, watching the shine, the brilliant trapped glow seeping into the cracks in her fingers. "And when I die, it's there, so that I can be born again."  
  
Her hand drops. "But now—I can't—Can't do that. It's trapped—I can't—I can't access it." She rubs the bright liquid between her fingers. Even here, now, when, when it's like this, when the life is quite literally oozing out of her, and clinging sticky and orange and hot to their clothes, she looks... Fascinated. Awed, vaguely, weakly, at the wonders of the universe, even now, even still. "Huh." She says, soft, under her breath.  
  
"What does that mean what does that _mean—_ " Ryan's voice is raw and hoarse yet again.   
  
Yaz's inhales are thin, and weepy.   
  
Graham's eyes are red.   
  
"I'm dying, gang."  
  
Her breath gurgles in her throat.   
  
Yaz has heard of death rattles. When she was young, her grandfather died. She wasn't there—But she had read up on death, later. In books that toted fancy science, had told her of _cell death_ and _total organ failure_ and more fictional books, books which didn't explain death, didn't explain decay, but showed it, showed it raw and unbearable and _there_.  
  
The Doctor's breath comes out as death rattles, and Yaz has never been this terrified in her life.   
  
"You—You—You can't _die,_ Doc—" Graham watched one brilliant, mad, insane woman die in front of him. And now, he watches another.   
  
Ryan shakes, silent, disbelieving. The wound of Grace still smarts, hot and bright. And a new one is being bored into his chest, now.   
  
Yaz has never faced death, before, aside it happening to distant figures she barely knew.   
  
Now, the pain of watching the person she loves die in front of her is eating her alive.   
  
The Doctor is paling in front of their eyes. The wound—It's black and scorched but barely deep, and yet, she bleeds and bleeds and doesn't stop, she bleeds an orange-red kind of blood, and that trapped, brilliant gold fluid which is slowly evaporating, coating Yaz in golden sand which sticks her tears to her face, as if fossilizing them. And here, now, the Doctor laughs, the sound brilliant but soft and muted. Yaz can taste the pain in her eyes.   
  
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, for giving you this burden. None—None of you deserved it. Watching me—" Her breath rattles. There is orange-red blood at her lips. It's the first time Yaz has seen any sort of hue but her soft natural pink on her lips.   
  
A lipstick crafted from her own agony and defeat; Tears of pinched pain serving as eye-shadow, the paleness of death as foundation.   
  
"Watching me go."   
  
Ryan's grasping one of her hands. Graham is grasping the other. Yaz is carding her hands through her soft hair, and imagines—How they wave when the air grows humid and hot. How they can get oily, if the Doctor isn't reminded to wash.   
  
Yaz loosely wonders if her hair will grow oily and oily and oily until she melts into a great puddle of oil, or, if her hair will be brittle, and she'll break, and become dust and ash and sand.   
  
Graham is old.   
  
He has faced his own death. He still faces it, every time he goes to the doctor's, and in his head hears the words 'It's back'. Graham saw his wife die to save all of them. Graham sees someone he, and his grandson, and his friend, value so utterly, dying.  
  
Graham has always been stronger, than all of them. Stronger than the Doctor, perhaps.   
  
"It's okay. Better—Better with us, then alone, eh?" He says—His eyes are red and his cheeks are wet and there's snot, ugly and thick, on his upper lip. But he keeps his voice low and calming. For her. For them.   
  
"I s'ppose." She slurs. Her eyes shut—But she's still breathing. Her eyes are puffy and heavy. That's all. "I didn't—Didn't think—It would h'ppen so fast. I d'nno—Seemed. Beyond me."   
  
"Yeah." Graham says. "That's the way it seems, for all of us, too."   
  
She laughs, gentle and soft.   
  
"It was nice." She adds. "Being with ya' all. I'm—I'm glad, it was you. And I'm—I'm s'rry."  
  
She takes another long, wheezing breath, and her exhale is shaky and bloody and raw.   
  
She does not inhale.   
  
It is a minute. It is two. It is five. It is eight, until Yaz and Ryan and Graham realize that she won't ever take another inhale, another breath, speak another word or breathe another bubbling laugh ever again.   
  
She is still.   
  
She is quiet.   
  
She's so painfully small, and delicate, and pathetic.   
  
She is wordless; And that's the worst thing. The Doctor always talked. Even in her sleep—There—There was never a silent moment with her. There was always—Endless talking. The constant low stream of noise in the background of all of the things they did.  
  
Yaz grips hair that is neither brittle or oily and she stares, wet eyes wide. And then she shakes the Doctor. And shakes her again. And again.   
  
And her face curls up, despair and denial dark and looming on her face and she pleads, " _Doctor_." As if she'll spring right back up, hale and whole and healthy, and laugh and say it was a great, great, great big ol' joke, you all.   
  
She doesn't.   
  
Yaz bends over her, pressing her face, wet and slimy with snot and tears and spit, on her neck, on her chest, and she twists at her clothes, pulling, and feels the heat slowly slowly escape and she cries, " _Doctor—"_ And the Doctor doesn't answer her.   
  
The Doctor is warm, and still, and in death, her features have relaxed. No more pain, no more wishing, no more missing—There is only—  
  
Not peace. Not peace. For there was still so much more to do.   
  
But it is something like it. A release. A rest. A slumber.   
  
The Doctor sleeps, and she leaves behind the waking mourning.   
  
Ryan's shuffled far away—Into a corner, tucked between a beam and the wall and another beam, squeezed and squeezed with his head on his knees and his head shakes, as if a constant stream of silent 'nos', against the fabric of his jeans. His face is pinched and he is silent and he is remembering a mother dead, a grandmother dead, a friend dead.   
  
Graham sits, quiet and still, slumped and slack. His grief is—Is numb. His grief is staring down at a still cooling body and remembering all of the times, good and bad, remembering them so furiously, so vehemently, so that he'll never ever ever forget them.   
  
In a way, he was ready for this. When he tried to remember some of his and Grace's most mundane moments—He drew a blank. And so, for the Doctor, he carefully stored everything away, so that nothing, no matter how small, would be forgotten.  
  
Graham is now almost, but not quite, used to death.   
  
Yaz is not.   
  
Yaz is not.   
  
Her heart is torn from her chest, made to beat and scream in the open air, and so—She wails.   
  
Over the Doctor's body, grasping at clothes and hair and flesh, she wails, and she begs.   
  
The Doctor does not listen.   
  
The TARDIS, under them, above them, all around them—It had been silent, until this moment.   
  
It makes little pneumatic hitches; Sharp rising and dipping noises, low and terrible and trembling.   
  
The TARDIS is weeping for her brilliant madman; Who stole an old dreadful thing like her away, and allowed her to see the universe.   
  
The TARDIS, the Doctor's most faithful companion, cannot possibly fathom the Death of the Doctor.   
  
And yet.   
  
This was always fated to happen.   
  
And so they sit, crying and weeping and silent and horrible, and Yaz and Graham and Ryan wonder what could possibly happen next. 

  
  
...

  
  
What happens next is:   
  
Yaz comes home.   
  
She is covered in sticky blood and there is sand on every part of her body. There is lingering heat on her, that, with each breath she makes, fades quick quick quick.   
  
Her family is eating dinner.   
  
They see her, silently weeping, filthy and destitute and heartbroken.   
  
Her mother draws her up in her arms first; Unthinkingly so, an instinct, a movement, ingrained down to her very marrow. When her child weeps, she will be there to smooth the pain away.   
  
But this pain cannot be smoothed away.   
  
Her father hugs her second.   
  
And then, even her sister does too, all sarcasm and sibling animosity sucked out of her.   
  
Her mother futily tries to wipe at her eyes, to stop the constant flow of tears, and she asks, "What happened?"   
  
Yaz doesn't answer. Her eyes are on the floor.   
  
She gathers up her spit, her bravery, all of the power in her body—"She's dead." She says, and her voice is barely audible at all. She's not sure if anyone heard her at all.   
  
But her family doesn't leave her for the rest of the night.   
  
Ryan and Graham have no other family but her, but, but, but, but but but but but the Doctor—And so they're here, too.   
  
And in the Khan living room, the three of them sit, cinnamon tea and hot chocolate and earl grey hot and steaming in their hands, knitted quilts on their backs, and they...   
  
They are. 

  
...

They fall asleep.   
  
Morning comes grey and gloomy and painfully bright. Yaz's eyes are puffy and purple and heavy.  
  
"We need to—I—I don't know—" She begins, at a breakfast table that's had a sofa pushed to it, to accommodate more people than the few chairs were meant for.  
  
"But we don't know—What she would have wanted." Ryan says, staring deep into his cup; He holds his chocolate with the grip of someone who is only cold on the inside, seeking to leech out anything resembling warmth to fill an emptiness inside.  
  
"Is there—Anyway to know?" Graham, asks, now. Yaz's family doesn't dare speak up. They didn't know the Doctor. To them, Yaz was gone but a day. To Yaz, it's been a lifetime, and they can see it in the slope of her shoulders, the dull glint in her eye.   
  
The world has passed by for the three of them, and they left everyone else behind to sputter in their wake.   
  
"No." Ryan shakes his head.   
  
"Do—Do—" Graham begins. "Do—Do we know.. anything?" Graham asks. At first, Yaz wants to say _of course not that's just what Ryan said—_  
  
And then she realizes exactly what he's implying.   
  
What do they know, of the Doctor? About the Doctor?   
  
When was she born? Where? What was her home planet called? Is she truly an alien, as she said, or a human from a time so far in the future that she might as well be one? How many lives has she lived? Why was she a woman, here, now, in her—Her—Her final life?   
  
What was her name? Does it even matter?   
  
Yaz presses her hands to her eyes—Her mother looks concerned, but Yaz doesn't cry. She physically can't. She'd never thought a person could run out of tears to shed—But here, now, she has.   
  
She rubs at her eyes, and feels hollow and empty.   
  
The three of them—Her family—Planet Earth—The universe—  
  
What did they all know, of the Doctor?   
  
Yaz half-knows, in that same way that Graham does with Grace, what the Doctor would say, to these questions. She'd say something bright and cheery, glowing like a tiny little sun, and say, "It doesn't matter what you know or don't know! What you know, who you know, here—That's who I am, that's what matters. None of that stupid, dreary stuff from long ago. Only what's here, what's now."   
  
Yaz knows the Doctor would believe every word of it.   
  
And Yaz painfully tries to do the same.   
  
But she's a creature of the past—Shaped, defined, caged by it. And so she just can't.   
  
And she wonders if she's a bad friend for never having asked, ever wondered for too long, about all of these painfully unanswered questions.   
  
"She loved Earth." Graham says, because he's always been the strongest of them. "I think—I think she'd like to be here. Stay here. Maybe even buried here. It's—Simple. But—"  
  
"It makes sense." Yaz doesn't know who says it; Her or Ryan or Graham or even the ghost of the Doctor. But she agrees with it.   
  
The Doctor has been free all of her life, and yet weighed down. Experiencing the horrible dichotomy between lightness and heaviness until her dying moments.   
  
Now, perhaps, she'd just like a rest from all of that. 

...

  
  
They had landed in a small wooded section between Yaz's house and Ryan's house. It was a small speckle of wood, in a neighborhood that was iron and concrete and asphalt.   
  
The TARDIS would not move from this spot. In fact, the TARDIS didn't do anything. As soon as they had carried the Doctor's body out of her—The TARDIS closed her doors, went dark, and did not move or howl or wheeze or do anything at all, not anymore.   
  
All three of them knew the Doctor would want to be close to her TARDIS. But this wasn't a cemetery, this was just a patch of dirty woodland in the middle of Sheffield and yet—  
  
And yet, from powers above them, when their half-baked, pathetic little request went through the local government, it was approved almost instantly.   
  
Perhaps the Doctor wasn't as alone as she had thought, in her last moments.   
  
They bury her on a day that's brilliantly sunny and bright, as if the Doctor's ghost was peering down at them, and telling them, "Cheer up, you lot!"   
  
Najia prepares her. Umbreen's mother prepared too many bodies, in the Partition. Umbreen learned the trade, second hand, and is experienced in the grim business of dealing with corpses, too. And it is her, frail and thin in her wheelchair, who coaches Yaz's mum, so that Yaz wouldn't have to bear with the too-heavy burden of it.   
  
It had felt wrong, to give her away to some mortician; It was far too possible that the two hearts would be noticed, and they would never see the Doctor again.   
  
Yaz hadn't wanted to do this to her mother.   
  
But Najia had raised her chin, eyes shining, and she had said; "She may have been not of our blood, but she was a Khan. And she deserves to be treated like one."   
  
The funeral was a short little affair. There wasn't really even a casket—That had felt wrong, too. Something about the Doctor prattling about heavy metals in the soil and letting natural processes take their toll. She was merely wrapped up in a bright red fabric which Najia had bought when Yaz was 12; The fabric was heavy, and luxurious, and great, and Yaz had been a foolish girl very fond of girly things like embroidery at the time, and so, she'd marred the shawl.   
  
And now, she would be seeing it for the last time, as a final honour to the Doctor.   
  
The funeral is silent. It's just them—Graham, Ryan, Yaz, and her family. It's them in a little patch of woodland right in the middle of the Sheffield, with the TARDIS, dark and looming, peering over their shoulders.   
  
The dirt is heaved over her body, until there is a mound of it, fresh and black, with patches of upturned grass, naked and bare amidst a floor covered in twigs and fallen leaves and sprouting grass.   
  
The TARDIS, dark and lifeless, is her headstone.   
  
Yaz had thought herself run out of tears; But she is wrong. For she weeps and she weeps and she weeps and while she stops by the eve; On the inside, she's afraid she'll never, ever stop.   
  
All of them sit, in a neat little circle, their drinks warm but also spiked with brandy and rum. Perhaps that could finally warm them up.   
  
They sit, and wonder about what could possibly come next.   
  
Is it even possible, at all, for there to be a 'next', after the Doctor?  
  
They suppose they have to find that out, the hard way. 

  
  
...

  
  
Yaz comes back to work. And it's as dull and horrible as ever.   
  
But luck strikes her; And she's promoted within the month. Patrol is still dreary and horrible—But now, she has a chance to tackle criminals, to stop thieves; To make the difference she's wanted to do her whole life.  
  
Ryan quits his warehouse job. He floats in limbo, for a while, before he decides to sit the exams that he had failed, a year and a half ago, all over again. Life with the Doctor had taught him so very many things. Some of those things was that you had to take chances; That real danger, real terror, was in doing nothing at all.   
  
Graham doesn't change. Not from the outside, at least. He still works as a bus driver; And is a beloved one at that. He's polite, kind, and good. In a way, while he learned so many brilliant things from the Doctor, too—The lessons were quieter, were more complex than the ones Ryan or Yaz learned. He's old. He's lived his life. The lessons she taught Ryan and Yaz were ones he learned long ago.   
  
No. From her, and Grace, he learns that sometimes, the quiet emptiness of a home is not a horror; But peaceful, and good, even if he needs noise, almost painfully, still. This is one of many things, he learns from her.   
  
Life doesn't go on. Not at first. There are moments, for all of them—When they wonder. When they hate. When they miss. When they weep. But no matter the tears or angry words they spill, nothing will come back, nothing will change by itself and magically; Change and progress and a better life is something they built with their own hands and their own raw pained effort.   
  
The weight of loss is something they learned from the Doctor; They learned the weight of it from a woman who bore the unbearable weight of it for most of her life.   
  
In the following weeks, they aren't the only ones to visit the Doctor's grave.   
  
There's a woman, with short dark hair and giant eyes. Another, with a head of bright flame. Another, with the careful appearance of a doctor. One blonde one, who's fuzzy at the edges, as if from TV static. Another who stares for a heavy moment, and then vanishes. A woman who sits for hours and hours upon the dirt, feeling the coldness and wetness of it, before she runs her hands through her curls, and leaves.   
  
It seems that the Doctor is someone who will be well missed.   
  
Yaz is promoted again. She finally has enough money to move out; And she does, to a flat just the next building over. Ryan moves in with her, furiously studying at the local university to become an engineer.   
  
Graham is alone in the home. Except he's not, because Ryan and Yaz visit every single day. Except not, because he meets a black haired woman who says the corniest jokes, and who sees the bone-deep melancholy inside of all of them, and while she doesn't understand—She cares, and she helps however she can. Her name is Emma, and she and Graham don't marry, but they are the next best thing.   
  
Ryan meets a bloke. And then a girl. Then another bloke. Another girl. And the next bloke he's with, he stays with for a good few months until they get a dog together, and they're absolutely insufferable with their happy couple smugness.   
  
Yaz meets people. She brings people to her bed, and she does everything she can to get gold hair and gold eyes and warm pale flesh from out of her mind.   
  
She fails.   
  
Two cats, some budgies, a parrot, and a ballpoint python are better than blokes or chicks or any of that, anyways.   
  
Peculiarly, in the years that pass by, something sprouts from the Doctor's grave. At first, it's just a dull green shoot, the hue of an evergreen. And it grows, quick and daring, and it reaches hungry limbs up, and come the springtime, silver leaves sprout upon it's dull green body.   
  
The shoot grows, to a sprout, to something that comes up to Yaz's waist, and then taller still. The leaves are silver, the bark a pure black, and when the tree it cut, it bleeds red-orange sap, and within the night the lost leaves and twigs are replaced as if nothing had happened at all.   
  
When Yaz is lonely, and scared, and painfully and utterly human, she sits under the growing tree's little canopy, and she wonders if, under her, there are any bones left, or if they're all roots by now.   
  
The TARDIS, still and silent and slowly growing dirty and dark, is pulled into the tree. It fuses with the black trunk, and now, if you peek at the tree, you'll see smears of blue and bits of glass and perhaps if you're really lucky, you'll see the low gleam of 'Police Box' somewhere within the tree's depths.   
  
They grow old, all of them.   
  
Graham dies in 2038. He passes quietly, surrounded by the people he loves.   
  
Ryan moves to the moon, in 2042, and last Yaz had heard, he was making his fortune up there with the man he married.   
  
Her sister is long gone, to London and then Dubai and then Hong Kong, and became a vet. Her mother and father are retired, and are traveling the world.   
  
Yaz stays.   
  
She watches the tree grow; Watches Sheffield boom then decay then become a quiet little unremarkable town again. She is a police officer, she's involved with the local community to help in her own little way, and she buries nine precious pets in the Doctor's Woods.   
  
At the grave of each, she sees Earth trees, with green leaves and flowers and fruit, grow, orbiting the Doctor's silver tree.   
  
They move on. They have mourned, they have missed, but now there is only just that—The now.   
  
And so the woman they did not know, but loved nonetheless, rests; Her bones turned into roots, her flesh into leaves, and her skin into black bark. And so, a tree of Gallifrey sprouts on Earth, and it grows, and grows, and grows, and when the sun rises and the sun sets, the light flickers brilliantly off the leaves, and the ground is washed in light and when the leaves fall they disappear, stolen by fond children and by Yaz who weaves the leaves into a cloth which she will be buried in, in 145 some years. 

**Author's Note:**

> ...................................
> 
> im ,,,, very, , ,sorry


End file.
